“The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were marked by a decadence of sculpture. Plastic art sought to become striking, rejected everything that could limit her art and gave herself up freely to her longing after what was striking. Henceforth it was decreed that every plastic work must be spirited. The most striking effects must be aimed at in the expression of inward emotion through mien, attitude and position.… Besides the drapery must be arranged in all sorts of ways conducive to effect.… Thus all dignity, simplicity and distinctness in sculpture, all plastic style was lost, and was succeeded by a senseless striving after outward effect and mere decoration.” The best Italian artists of these years were Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), who showed well the perversion of the principles of art, and Alessandro Algardi. The French claimed as their most celebrated masters in the seventeenth century, Pierre Puget, who worked chiefly at Genoa, and François Girardon, both of whom are noted for their exaggerations; in the eighteenth century were Houdon and Pigalle. Franz Duquesnoy, the Fleming, worked at Rome in the seventeenth century and gained a fine reputation by his life-like figures of children. In Berlin, Andrew Schlüter executed superior works. Among these are the masks of dying warriors carved above the windows of the court of the Arsenal. An equestrian statue of the Great Elector is his best work. In the latter half of the eighteenth century a revival of sculpture took place; this has been attributed to the efforts of Popes Clement XIV. and Pius VI., to the publications of Winckelmann, and to the unearthing of the treasures of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The first sculptor to initiate works of purer taste was Canova (1757-1822); he came of a race of stone cutters, and while at work at his trade executed the figures which attracted the attention of a Venetian, who educated him for an artist. Canova’s early works were mythological in subject. He had studied sculptures unearthed at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and under their influence executed his “Apollo crowning himself with laurel” and “Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur.” In 1802 Canova was invited by Napoleon to Paris where he executed a colossal statue of the emperor. His figures of women were his most pleasing works. Of the many monuments he executed, the best is that of Christina in the church of the Augustines at Vienna. But few artists escaped the influence of Canova. Among his best known followers were Dannecker, of Stuttgart; Chaudet, a French artist, and Flaxman, an English sculptor. For a brief outline of the sculptor of the nineteenth century we can do nothing better than quote from Lübke: